Tag: Tips/Tricks

Google Forms – Responses, Flubaroo, and Classroom (Part 2)

You checked out the first Google Forms Post and you created a Google Form to give to your students. That’s awesome! Now what…

Responses

Once the assessment is designed to your liking, click the “Responses” tab at the top of the Google Form. This will give you a myriad of options to collect student information. First, create a Google Spreadsheet by clicking the “sheets” button at the top.
This will give you the option to “Create A New Sheet” or attach it as a tab into an existing spreadsheet. If you are giving this as an assessment, then at this point you are ready to share it with your students!

Tip: Technically you don’t have to create the spreadsheet before giving the test, but that is just how I normally do it.

As students begin taking the assessment, their responses will appear on the Google Form Response page (but only after submitting the assessment).

Example of Student Responses

What’s great is that it gives you the overview of each question! For Example, 37% of participants chose the wrong answer. Questions to consider: Bad wording of question? Insufficient teaching of the material? Etc. You can also click on “Individual” and see the participants assessment and which answer they specifically selected. This is less intuitive than the “Summary” tab, but still helpful none-the-less if you want to see how a specific student answered.

Flubaroo

One of the great things about using Google Forms, especially for Formative Assessments, is the ability to use Flubaroo to auto-grade the participants answers. Realize though that Flubaroo is not a Google Forms add-on but a Google Sheets add-on. To access Flubaroo, go to the corresponding sheet (click on the sheet button at the top of the “Responses” tab). Once on the spreadsheet, do the following: click “add-on,” select “Get add-ons,” search “Flubaroo,” click “+ Free” to add it to your sheet.

Tip: After you “Get Flubaroo,” it will always be an option for your spreadsheets, even if you don’t create the spreadsheet through Google Forms.

Answer Key Gif

Now that Flubaroo is added to your spreadsheet, you have a lot of different options. To set up the grading, you must take the assessment personally so that Flubaroo can use it as a template for grading all the student assessments. When doing “Auto-grading”, Flubaroo then gives you various options for each question type including: “Identifies Students,” “Skip Grading,” “Normal Grading,” and “Grade By Hand.”

Tip: For the name, use “Answer Key” to remind yourself when you go to create the template for Flubaroo.

Example of Student ResponsesBottom of Flubaroo Spreadsheet

Identifies Students – Used for non-grading purposes, specifically sending the results to participants after completing the assessment.

Skip Grading – As stated, will skip grading the question and won’t be given as a option for sending results to students. This is great for getting their perspective, or testing questions without any consequence to students.

Normal Grading – Will give you the option to provide various point levels for these questions. This would be for the multiple choice/matching style questions that it matches to your answer key.

Grade By Hand – A great way to do short answer questions. However, for most essay style questions, I use Google Docs and the Add-On Doctopus to grade. I will do a blog post about that later on in the year.

Personally, I love the auto-grade option, so that students can get feedback immediately on where they stand with the content. Due to the immediate response, I do not do any short answer questions (besides Identifying Student Type) so that students can know how they did.

Google Classroom

When assigning the assessment to students, use Google Classroom! Create an assignment on Classroom, and add the Google Form Assessment from Drive. What’s great is that it will keep track for you of what students have taken/not taken the assessment. The only frustration is that the grades are not carried over to Google Classroom (but should Google Classroom really be for grades or should it just be used for feedback? Something to think about.).

Any other thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Share this:

Like this:

Web Diagram

In my American Government class, we began the discussion of the legislative branch. One of the important aspects of this branch is the process of how a bill becomes a law. This semester I decided that we would do it with a tech tool, which could allow for collaboration, correction, etc.

Initially, I had students use “Mindmaps by mindmapmaker.org” to diagram how a bill becomes a law. After the first day of students working with this tool, it became apparent that it was a frustrating tool for the students. (Mindmaps may be a wonderful tool, but for what I was asking my students to do, it was not helpful.)

Doesn’t Work… Fix it

As I saw the frustration on my students’ facez, I decided it was time to find a new tool. So I went back to drive and looked for another web diagraming tool. That’s when I found “Lucidcharts for Education,” and immediately I knew it was going to be a better tool for our project. It allowed students to make any adjustments seamlessly, while also saving instantly (which mindmap failed to do).

Lucidcharts

Initially when you sign up for Lucidcharts, it places you in the “free-version” which has various restrictions such as: create only 5 documents and the use of 60 “complexities” (or as I told my students “symbols”). For the project we were doing, the “complexities” limitation was frustrating, but as a program, the students absolutely loved it! It allowed for quick adjustments, additions, and reformatting that was excruciatingly tough to do on Mindmaps.

How to use Lucidcharts

To create a web diagram using Lucidcharts, just go to your Drive and click the following: New–>More–>Lucidcharts. Then create a document (either blank or from one of their templates) in order to get started. From there, you can drag various symbols over from the left toolbar such as Text, Shapes, etc. With the boxes or text on the document, you can draw lines to help create a flow from one step to the next. (After Lucidchart approved our school for the free education upgrade, you will have unlimited complexities! That definitely made all the difference). To help make the web diagram stand out, students can change the fill color of the boxes, lines, text, etc.

For our project, I suggested to students that they color code the steps to help them quickly identify things like vocabulary or the house/senate differences. Finally, students can share their projects with each other as a point of reference. It was interesting how different students found steps/information that other students had missed, so sharing it with each other helped them to add them to their own project. Also, (unlike Mindmaps) Lucidcharts allows individuals to work simultaneously with one another (just like the other Google Apps Tools).

Google Classroom – Turn It In

I provided the assignment through Google Classroom with the expectations. As students found valuable resources, they would share them via the “class comment” so that other students could use them. When students finished, they would add it to Google Classroom the same way they would turn in other Google Apps products (docs, sheets, slides, etc.).

Lesson Plan Design

First, determine what your goal/objective is for the lesson.

For both World Geography and European History, it was an easy and natural fit to use MyMaps. In European History, I have always had students do some type of presentation (Powerpoint, Keynote, Slides) to detail the trips and explorations of various explorers. But as I prepared for that annual lesson, I decided to give MyMaps a go around in order to have a completely student created product. For World Geography, I have always wanted them to get a greater understand of the world’s natural resources and the disparity of their use/production throughout the world.Tip: Create a generic map for students to look at, in order to understand how they can manipulate their own maps.

Second, provide the guiding questions and objectives for students to quickly access and research.

New this year, I have been using Google Classroom for my classes. To get students the questions and topics, I posted an “assignment” on Google Classroom with the following:

Topics/QuestionsTypes of resources to useHow to cite sourcesLink to MyMap (Created by me, but will explain how later)Initial Due Date (To help critique student work)Tip: When creating the MyMap link as a teacher, go to mymaps.google.com. Then click share and change access to “Anyone at *School Domain* with the link” and “Can Edit.” Next, copy the URL and post it on the Classroom Assignment.

Third, students begin researching and posting their information to the linked MyMap.

I had each student (or in my case pairs) create a “layer” on their MyMap for a couple different reasons. First, I wanted to be able to easily assess the students without having to search throughout the map for each students work. Second, it prevented students from accidentally deleting or changing other students work.Tip: There is a limit to the number of layers (10 Total) you can create, so be cognizant of the amount.

Fourth, review students work and provide immediate feedback on their design and information.

Example of Student work

As students begin posting their information to the map, give them insight on how best to improve their layer. For example, having students use different colors/symbols in order to differentiate their work from other students (Ex. Christopher Columbus being the yellow line and markers). Some other ways to improve their map would be to include the following: Pictures/videos on markers, journal writings or data information for each marker, proper structure/organization on the side information bar.Tip: Unlike the other Google Apps tools, Google MyMaps does not automatically update as students work on it. However, if you reload the map, all the other work will be updated to your map.

Fifth, share the student work with the rest of the world!

After students have completed the assignment, change the share settings to “On – Public Web” and “Can View.” Then copy the URL and share it out to the rest of the world!Tip: Post it to Google+ in order to demonstrate your students work, as well as inspire other teachers to have students create their own resources!What other ideas do you have for student created maps? Ways to make the process even better?

A video below to explain how I use this in the classroom!

Share this:

Like this:

This Friday I get the joy of presenting to various teachers within our Conference. My presentation will be focused on the Google Educator Certification Process and everything needed to do well on the exam. I have included the Presentation on this Blog, so give me any other suggestions you have concerning the exam and it’s process! Thanks to various individuals who helped me along the way: +Patrick Dempsey+Alice Keeler+Jay Atwood+Kyle Pace

Share this:

Like this:

Maps

As a high school social studies teacher, I constantly use different types of maps for all of my classes. More times than not, these are maps created by other individuals with various amounts of information that may/or may not be pertinent to my classroom.

After attending the GAFE (Google Apps For Education) KC Summit this summer, the idea of map creation (as opposed to map consumption) became a real reality. The presentation was done by Stafford Marquardt (Product Manager for Google My Maps) on how to use mymaps.google.com to create interactive maps. Simply put, this presentation rocked my world in all the right ways!

Title the Map

So how does it work?

Outline an area

First go to mymaps.google.com and start creating maps! One of the cool features of My Maps is that the file is automatically saved in your Drive so that you can access it like your other Google Docs. Which means you can also share them just like Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc. I realize that right now I need to provide more details on what to do, but really just messing with My Maps will amaze you.

Tips/Tricks

Title the shape

Create various different “layers” in order to keep it nice, neat and organized. If you want students to work on the same project, then have a different layer for each student.

Use the drawing mechanism to outline states, cities, etc. and then apply a color over the top. Once the color is applied, you can change the transparency to the desired level.

Provide a color to the shape

When you use the “marker” option, you can include pictures, videos, descriptions of that marker or location.

Insert a marker with various Details

If you do not want to create maps, or have students create maps, Google has provided some pre-built maps. These maps can be found at both of the following:

Classroom Example:

Have students draw the path of Lewis and Clark from St. Louis to the Pacific and back. Break up the students with the job of a specific city on the route to another city (St. Louis to Omaha). Then have students trace the path, provide images of those location (Past and Present), and include words/images from the Lewis and Clark Journal (Link to Journal) to the spot where it was likely written.

Conclusion

I want to end with the following statement I have used constantly in the last two months. Start by messing with it and do not be afraid to break it. It normally is easy to fix and you will be shocked how capable you are at creating cool/interactive things!